School Shootings

Should Educators Carry Guns or Not?
According to a list of school shootings on the CNN web-site, there were twenty school shootings that happened in the United States between January 2018 and April 2018. Twenty shootings, which killed and injured many people, on campuses are not a small number. Shockingly, a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida killed seventeen innocent people on February 14th, 2018, and it is a serious alert to students’ safety on campus. Many people believe that educators should be armed, so the students would feel safe while being in schools. Some people also urge the American government to enact a law, which allows educators to possess weapons in schools. On the other hand, there have been

a lot of disagreements about ideas of armed educators. One disagreement from students is because the teachers might not have a stable mentality to make a right decision and possibly end up shooting the wrong targets in hostile situations. Another disagreement is the fear and comfort of students being around armed educators when they go to school. A critical discussion on the pros and cons of educators carrying guns will help people understand why shootings on campus should be addressed as well as becoming more aware of this concerning issue.
The primary reason why many people believe that educators should be armed with weapons is to protect the students if a school shooting happens.

If teachers have guns, they would be first responders in an emergency situation, while it takes a while, such as “five minutes, ten minutes or [even] longer, [for the police to] respond to [an incident]” (Santoni 2018). Teachers want to have more choices to prevent students from danger in school shooting situations. To be more specific, as a teacher, Kasey Hansen, who is teaching in Utah, wants to ensure the safety of her students, so she is willing to “stand in front of a bullet for any student” (Murphy 2014). To her, this is the best solution to protect students, but she also wants “another option to defend [both students and herself]” (Murphy 2014). Therefore, she is one of many people across America, who encourages teachers to carry handguns in schools after terrible school shootings had happened in America. They believe that they can actively control and solve incidents in emergencies by bearing arms instead of passively waiting for the police officers. Thus, carrying guns is the most optimal idea for educators in order to protect students against the imminent danger. On the contrary, there is a strong disagreement of the idea of arming teachers from Russ Moore, who is the principal of Shaker Junior High School in Latham, New York. Specifically, he states that “changing laws to allow educators to be armed in schools is flatly bad policy and a bad idea.” He believes that “most people would not have rational thought or skill [on how to control guns]” (Moore 2014). In South Dakota, teachers and other staff in schools have joined the program named “school sentinels” that allows teachers and staff to be armed with weapons. In order to qualify this program, the school faculty has “to be approved by the school board or a law enforcement agency” (Chavez 2018). More importantly, educators have to be trained “eighty hours of use

of force, weapons proficiency, legal aspects and first aid classes” (Chavez 2018). For instance, Jim Krohn, who is a teacher at the Clarksville Junior High School in Arkansas, trained to become an armed guard, so that he can productively protect the students in bad situations like shooting (Chavez 2018). Nevertheless, Russ Moore argues that “providing stop-gap "training" would not address the whole picture [of school shootings issue] (Moore 2014). As a consequence, many people insist that protecting students is an outstanding benefit of armed educators, whereas others reject the idea of arming teachers and its benefits by pointing out bad outcomes of this solution.
Besides the advantages of armed educators, many people go against the opinion that school faculty should have right to bear arms on-site because guns might be used on wrong targets in stressful situations. The main purpose of armed teachers is to protect students in case of emergencies, but it makes schools become gun-free zones, and it is considered as a potential danger in the learning environment. In a video of CNN named “Students don’t like the idea of arming teachers,” a student who is one of “survivors of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School,” said that “I feel like arming teachers is just fighting fire with fire. I feel like we will not get anything done if we just continue to pile on the amount of firearms that we are selling and giving out to people. It is not even a solution” (00:35-00:55). In addition, using weapons, such as handguns, in schools would make the school environment become unpleasant and uncomfortable for students to perform well in classes. A representative of Ceasefire PA, which is a group of gun control, states that “the guns teachers carry could be taken and turned against them, or used on the wrong people: Having guns in schools or classrooms could lead to them ending up in the wrong hands.” As a result, additional school violence might occur. What if teachers lose their control, then they might use guns on wrong purpose or the wrong people. For example, teachers could lose their calm when getting stressed about something off-campus or on-campus. They would abuse the guns as pressure to make students get compliant, so the idea of educators carrying guns in schools may cause more school violence at some point.
Many people believe that it is not fair for teachers to carry guns in schools, for their majority duties are to focus on teaching. It would be overwhelming to force them to attend professional firearm training courses. To be more specific, Randi Weingarten, who is taking over the president position of the National Federation of Teachers, mentioned, “Teachers do not want to be armed; we would never want to be sharp shooters.” His opinion totally went against President Trump’s perspective, which says "well-trained, gun-adept teachers and coaches" should carry firearms in schools” (Liptak 2018). Once again, President Trump believes that “arming teachers should be a part of gun policy” (Abramson 2018). In a listening session, held at the White House on February 21st, 2018, with teachers, students, and families of victims of Parkland’s shootings, Trump emphasized, “an attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes. It takes five to eight minutes for responders, for police to come in. If you had a teacher who is adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly” (Abramson 2018). In contrast, another point for the disagreement of guns in schools is that teachers lack gun control skills. According to a survey of Gallup web-site, there are “six in ten teachers think schools would become less safe if educators armed themselves” (Abramson 2018). Therefore, there are too many risks which can occur. If some bad situations, like shooting the wrong people, happen, who is going to take responsibilities for the consequences? Then, teachers, who strongly oppose the idea of carrying guns, would reject the duties because they show their strong disagreements of the idea.
In conclusion, school shootings are a problematic issue in the U.S., and it should be addressed to keep safety for students and make the school environment safer. If students go to school and keep thinking about the safety of their lives, while having anxiety about the places they are studying, how can the students focus on their studies? This discussion focuses on the real problem on which the government should work after many mass of horrible shootings have happened on-campuses. More importantly, it reflects on how necessary is it for educators to carry guns in schools? Also, it points out the strong disagreements, from students and teachers, of arming educators because of the dangerous drawbacks. Students believe that arming educators is not an ideal solution of school shootings, but it makes them feel less safe when teachers bear guns in schools.